Do you need to be vegan to save the planet?
On my sustainability journey, I have gone from focusing on “zero waste” to carbon emission reduction. Reducing my carbon footprint has meant reconsidering what I eat. It is estimated that approximately one quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases come from food production and I have read many articles indicating that eating vegan is the way to go to reduce your carbon footprint. However, it remains a complex issue:
Impact of Going Vegan on the Planet
I used to think that if you were vegan, you were an extreme person. Vegans don’t eat or wear anything made from animal sources, This means eggs, cow’s milk, honey and of course any kind of meat is literally off the table. However, much like my shift away from consumerism towards minimalism, I now have had a mindset shift. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so strange. One of the key reasons for my change in attitude towards veganism is the benefit to the climate.
Full disclosure: I am not vegan or even vegetarian. While I eat vegetarian or vegan more than half the week, I still eat some fish, chicken and even occasionally some beef. Oh, the guilt of it all.
I decided that I wanted to learn more about what the actual impact of the food that I eat is on my carbon footprint. Some of the data that I was able to find is shown in the following table:
| Food Item | CO2 Emissions (Source: Environmental Working Group Meat Eaters Guide, kg per kg of food item) | CO2 Emissions (Source: Our World in Data, kg per kg of food item) |
| Lamb | 39.2 | 24 |
| Beef | 27 | 60 |
| Cheese | 13.5 | 21 |
| Pork | 12.1 | 7 |
| Turkey | 10.9 | 7 |
| Chicken | 6.9 | 6 |
| Tuna / Farmed Fish | 6.1 | 5 |
| Eggs | 4.8 | 4.5 |
| Rice | 2.7 | 4 |
| Nuts | 2.3 | 0.3 |
| Beans/Tofu | 2.0 | |
| Vegetables | 2.0 | Less than 1 |
| Coconut oil | 2 | |
| Milk | 1.9 | 3 |
| Fruit | 1.1 | Less than 1 |
| Lentils | 0.9 | |
| Soy Milk | 0.3 |
It is clear that the variability in the data is an issue and shows the challenges with determining the climate impact of different foods. Nevertheless, we can conclude that eating a meat based diet is definitely not the way to go to reduce our impact on the climate. No news here. However, I was alarmed to learn that cheese has such a high carbon footprint, third after beef! Butter, not listed here, is also quite high in terms of carbon emissions (range 5-13 CO2 equivalent kg per kg of butter). At the other end of the spectrum, cow”s milk is surprisingly low at 2-3 kg CO2 equivalent emissions. I expected it to fall somewhere closer to cheese.
If you look at the total estimated CO2 impact from a vegan or vegetarian diet, the difference is not as large as you might think: about 1000 kg per year CO2 equivalent emissions per person for a vegan versus 1500 kg per year for a vegetarian (data from Being the Change by Peter Kalmus). Compare that to someone who includes a lot of meat in their diet: 3000 kg per year of carbon equivalent emissions. The data shows that being vegan is the best option for fighting climate change. However, from a waste management point of view, veganism is a challenge. Tofu and tempeh and a lot of processed vegan food items are generally packaged in plastic.
The benefit of veganism on the climate more than offsets the use of fossil fuels for packaging these food items. At the end of the day, there is no perfect solution and each of us have to choose a path that works for us and our lifestyles. So where does this leave me? With lots of food for thought and a desire to learn more about vegan cuisine. What about you?